Yoga teacher’s toolbox: How to work with neck and upper back

Whenever you design a yoga class aimed at releasing tension in the neck and upper back, it helps to remember the following important points:

1. Static stretching of the neck is less effective than dynamic movement. Movement helps increase circulation to the neck and release tension.
2. We cannot effectively increase circulation to the neck without including the upper body, which means moving the thoracic spine and the shoulder girdle.
3. Your yoga practice can release neck tension, or it can create it, depending on how you position your head in different poses.
4. Adding various arm movements to traditional yoga poses is an effective way to target specific parts of the neck and upper back. For example, some variations of Virabhadrasana 1 are very effective for dealing with neck and upper back tension.
5. It is natural for your head to move in linear fashion. Circling the head is NOT a natural movement for the neck and can create potential problems.
6. It is not advisable to take your neck from one extreme to another – from deep cervical extension to fixed cervical flexion, and vice versa. You need to make sure that you use adequate preparation and compensation for more extreme neck positions in some poses (like Camel, Fish, Hare, Shoulderstand, etc.)

Read more about these points in the posts below.

Sequence Wiz blog posts about neck and upper back

6 reasons your yoga practice can become a pain in the neck

Many of us carry tension in our necks. When we go to a yoga class, we hope to come out with our necks feeling better. But that is not always the case. There are certain things that you might be doing in a yoga class that generate neck tension, instead of relieving it. Here are some of them.

Read more >

How to stretch your neck and relieve neck tension more effectively

If you are stretching your neck to relieve neck tension, it is like prying open a clenched fist – uncomfortable and ineffective. What do you do instead?

Read more >

+ Possible neck movements and effective yoga poses

Doing neck circles can compress your cervical nerves and cause other issues

See Also

Recent guidelines about dealing with back pain: do they make sense?

Circling the head is NOT a natural movement for the neck. When you move the head in an artificial circular pattern, you override the protective mechanism that your body has in place. Neck circles are not safe for you.

Here is why >

Should we take the body to the maximum bend possible in every direction possible?

Is it safe to go straight from Camel pose to Hare pose? On the surface it appears legit – we are using a strong forward bend (Hare pose) to compensate for the deep back bend (Camel pose) – so, basically, after bending one way, we bend the other way. But once we take a closer look, we can see a very specific area of accumulated stress – the neck.

Read more >

Sample yoga practices

Featured Upper Back Favorites from the sequence builder

When you use Sequence Wiz yoga sequence builder, you can choose a body area and get suggestions on poses that work best to address it. Each option includes poses, reasons for using them and movement instructions. Give it a try >